The deadlift is one of the greatest exercises you will ever do in the gym because your buttocks, back, and legs contain some of the strongest muscles in the human body. With their combined forces, you can move a lot of iron. But for many of us there is a weak point: our grip.
This is where the straps come in. You simply wrap a piece of hard fabric around the handlebars and your grip is no longer an obstacle. But that leads to controversy. If you can’t hold onto that heavy bar, is it really fair to say you can lift it? On the other hand, if your body is strong enough to lift the deadlift bar off the floor, is it really fair to let your measly hands hold you back?
Let’s look at the rules
In order to determine if something is cheating, we have to decide which rules apply. Let’s look at the rules for the two sports where the deadlift is most competitive: powerlifting and strongman.
Belts are not legal in powerlifting. (Here is the USAPL rulebook, for example: See page 18 for a list of permitted “personal equipment” (excluding straps). Look at that Video of the world record holders in each weight class at the time of video recording: none of them pull with straps.
But they often are in strongman. (The rules for strongman are not standardized, so there is no single set of rules, but promoters usually allow straps on most deadlifts.) Here is Lucy Underdown pulls 300 kilograms for a new record; You can see her put straps around the bar before she settles down and starts pulling.
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However, when you are alone in the gym, no one is following you with a rule book, so you have to make the decision yourself.
What are the pros and cons of using straps in the gym?
The disadvantage of straps is that they don’t challenge your grip. If you’ve always used straps for pulling exercises, you may never find your grip getting stronger. For this reason, many lifters do not use belts. If you can’t grip a weight, you won’t lift it.
The downside of the straps is exactly the same: they let your grasping muscles take a break. This way, straps allow you to lift heavier than no or more reps without worrying about grip fatigue.
Most participants, in both strongman and powerlifting, train part of their training with harnesses and others without. However, if you don’t compete and just want to get stronger in the gym, you can do what you want – always or never with straps, depending on your preference.
So you get the best of both worlds
To be a well-rounded strong person, you will likely want to use straps at times. I recommend the following:
- When doing deadlifts, do as many as possible without a seat belt.
- If your grip tires before you’re done, use straps as needed to finish the workout.
- If you’re doing high-rep sets that you know will tire your grip, consider using straps. (For example Romanian deadlift or rowing.)
- Do grip training sessions afterwards (or on different days), as targeted training will make your grip stronger. We have a guide to improving your deadlift grip here.
That’s pretty much what I do. I don’t use harnesses for lifts that I train to competition standards (like deadlifting or snatching), but I keep a pair in my gym bag Use for overload exercises (like heavy rack pulls) or high-rep exercises (like Romanian deadlifts in sets of 10). I also do grip workouts regularly, and as a result, my deadlift strength has increased over the years and my grip has gotten stronger. When used properly, harnesses are great exercise tools.
